losing is finding
by Audrie Nicole Anthony
Summary: Dick Grayson now Nightwing meets an interesting stranger in Bludhaven. After, discovering his identity as the Jokers son he must decide if his mind and his heart can find a way.
1. Chapter 1

p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"JJ POV/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;" /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"In the eyes of the legal world I was never actually born, I have no birth certificate, no Social Security number, no friends, and on a good day, no parents. I came screaming into this world in the back of a strip club as the son of The Joker and Harley Quinn. Before, I was taking my first breaths, my father had considered how best to rid himself of this proof of humanity, drowning or a simple gunshot? I'll most likely never know what or whom stopped him for ending my life, but I can't say I was better off living. /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;" /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"My earliest memories are of violent fights, murder, being beaten myself, being locked in a metal cabinet, and of the hundreds of lost people that my father and mother would recreate into their lunatic followers. Most of my early life was spent being cared for by junkie prostitutes that worked in the back rooms of my fathers clubs. They would trade me off while they turned tricks and shot heroin, but at least when I was with them I would be fed./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;" /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"Once I got into my teens, life become a little more livable, I had become old enough to care for myself and learned quickly when to avoid my parents and their "family" of gangsters. /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;" /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"My psychopathic parents where crime bosses with a love of all things violent, leading a huge following of lackeys that would kill and die for them. They had several strip clubs that where fronts for their illegal prostitution and gambling houses. When I was 13 my father decided it was time I started pulling my weight and began tossing me into bare-knuckle fights that one of his clubs would host on Friday nights. The fights would bring in crime bosses and wannabes from all over Gotham and neighboring cities to bet, gamble and network their criminal 'businesses.'/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;" /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"For the first couple years I was nothing more than a side show, a child getting beaten to a pulp by seasoned gangsters, but I got better. Soon I was winning against opening fighters and by the time I was 17 I was beating harden criminals into bloody messes, winning every fight my father tossed me in, bring in winnings for the house and for me. I hadn't gotten better for my father or even for survival, I had found my way out. /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;" /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"I knew if I won enough fights, I could save enough money to get the hell away from this shit show I was born into. I think in a fucked up way my mother might have loved me in her past life, but as she was now, she was as much as a lunatic as The Joker. I had always had a deadline for my escape, but just shy of my twenty first birthday my deadline choose itself. /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;" /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"It was a night like most. I had gone out for my normal Jog, when I had gotten back to the old warehouse my father had at the edge of the city, where he had let me build a small apartment in the back, there was a stale scent of death in the air. If you've smelled a corpse that was freshly dead you know it's a wet coppery smell and it was a scent I was all to familiar with. In the middle of the warehouse was a pile of red and black clothing covered in blood. I remember thinking how odd it was, usually my father kept his murders near the pier or the chemical plant, if he was feeling nostalgic. Then I saw a hand sticking of the fabric, I knew it wasn't a pile of clothing, it was a body and after, seeing the beaten boyish face and small black 'R' on his chest, I knew it was Robin. At that moment my fathers obsession with the Batman had gone to far. /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;" /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"I had never had any personal run ins with the dark knight as I wanted nothing to do with my fathers "businesses" and he didn't care enough about me to give a shit about a progeny, but my father and The Batman had been trying to kill each other from before I was born and before the Bat ever had a Robin. /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;" /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"However, the Robin that lay in front of me covered in blood was smaller than the original one I had seen a couple years ago when he and the Bat raided one of fathers clubs during a fight. This one was clearly younger and just a boy. That night I packed everything I had and I left Gotham. /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;" /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Cambria;"Its been five years since I came to Bludhaven, I wish I could tell you I found a better way at life but its hard to find a job with no social security number or birth records, so I went back to fighting, but this time it was on my terms. I couldn't do it forever, but I would either figure something else out or get killed. /p


	2. Chapter 2

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div id="summary" class="summary module" style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.643em; position: relative; width: auto; float: none; min-height: 5em;"  
blockquote class="userstuff" style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 1em; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0.643em; padding: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; word-wrap: break-word;"  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dick and Bludhaven PD raid a fighting ring and meet an unusual young man./p  
/blockquote  
/div  
/div  
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h3 id="work" class="landmark heading" style="border-width: 0px 0px 0.25em; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: #333333; outline: 0px; font-weight: 500; font-style: inherit; font-size: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0.125em; line-height: 0; opacity: 0; height: 0px; clear: both; color: transparent;"Chapter Text/h3  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"Dick POV/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Hey Grayson, you ready to raid?!," I turned around to see my old, overweight partner, Henry, giving some sort of police gang sign? /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Henry, I think you should stick to the traffic stops." I rolled my eyes, I was the youngest detective on the force and even after 3 years they still treated me like a kid, but at least they respected me when it counted./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"When I came from Gotham 3 years ago I had a faked resume, thanks to Gordon, that gave me a detective shield and the freedom to do some good away from Robin. Even after proving myself on the streets, that I wasn't some rookie cop with high-up connections, I still went home feeling empty. Being a cop did let me fill some of the void left by my departure from Robin, but I needed more, more control, more freedom and at that time more violence. I was angry, I blamed Bruce, but with time I've come to realize the anger was more at myself, so I've channeled it, into Nightwing. I've been Det. Dick Grayson and Nightwing now long enough that Robin is just a fait memory, like a bad ex-girlfriend. You think about them fondly till you remember just how shity they actually were. /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Uhhh Grayson, I don't know what cloud your sitting on, but I was serious about the raid. Tactical is leaving in 10," it was Henry's turn to roll his eyes. He was an old jaded cop that had seen Bludhaven crash into the hands of criminals and street savvy officials, but he kept his nose clean and showed up everyday, more than I could say about the rest of the PD. /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"'Shit.' I had forgotten we where raiding that underground fighting ring in the warehouse district tonight. These underground fighting rings where popping up all over Budhaven. Thankfully they didn't come with the whore houses and the human trafficking that had came in tow with The Jokers fight houses, but nonetheless they were spreading like a /\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"SWAT had broken down the doors, gathering the fight-ring attendees that hadn't snaked away through the escape doors. When the team had entered the thugs had scattered like ants from water, criminals pulled their guns, crime bosses jumped behind their bodyguards and strippers screamed. The only person that hadn't tried to high tail it away from our wave of cops and assault weapons was this kid. He had waited in the make shift locker rooms with his hands in the air, no fight, and no problem. I say kid, but he looked around the same age as me. I approached him cautiously /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""I'm Detective Dick Grayson, how are you tonight?" that seemed like a ridiculous question on my part, seeing as he was surrounded by police officers. Henry had asked me to question him briefly, since he had played the silent game with my colleagues. /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"His stony blue eyes met mine. He seemed familiar somehow, the way the blue in his eyes looked almost green around the pupil was something that struck me as recognizable. I couldn't place him, because I was sure I didn't know him. Plus, I would remember scars like that. His bare chest rivaled my own, there were light discolored scars covering most of his bare skin, with some large enough that I couldn't imagine what they were made with, a fucking sword?/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""I'm alive" is all he said; I almost forgot I had asked him a question. Before I could look any more erratic I began asking him some routine questions./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""Do you have a name?" I said, still fixated by his eyes. /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;""I have always just been called JJ."He said, I nodded writing down what I thought was a nickname till he continued, making me stop taking notes with his /"I wouldn't bother writing it down Detective you'll never find me, I have no records."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"I looked at him and smiled, "everyone has a birth certificate, JJ once we get you down to the stati.." /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"he cut me off, "not me detective, not me"/p  
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